Traditional
New Orleans Jazz Funeral
for late Tuba Player,
Kerwin James
Oct., 2007
New Birth Brass Band tuba player Kerwin James, who walked out of devastated New Orleans with his instrument on his back, passed away. He had been in a coma since the summer of 2006, when he suffered a devastating stroke.
When the news of his passing hit James’s native Treme neighborhood in New Orleans, a spontaneous parade erupted on St. Phillip Street. That’s just the way they have always rolled over there, the way, as one attendee put it in this NOLA.com report, they honor fallen musicians "from the day they pass until the day they're put in the ground."
But this procession was different. This time, while the band played the old hymn “I’ll Fly Away” with tears streaming down their faces, the cops decided to make the parade fly away. Twenty squad cars descended on the procession, and in an ensuing fracas, snare drummer Derrick Tabb and trombonist/singer Glen David Andrews were arrested for disturbing the peace.
It seems that for the first time in anybody’s living memory, you now need a permit to have a jazz parade in the Treme. The police say that they are responding to noise complaints, most coming from post-Katrina newcomers to the neighborhood.
Many of these people were attracted to the neighborhood because of its jazz history. And now they want to see to it that it remains just that – history. They can’t handle the reality of jazz musicians playing in the streets whenever they damn well please, even if that’s the way the neighborhood has been for the past century or more.
New Birth Brass Band at Sammy’s a few days after Katrina:
NOPD break-paradise:
